Built by life, driven by dreams

Where are we…

Last week was so busy I can’t quite remember, where we are or what we’re up to.

January at work is the worst month of the year, without question and once you to get to this point in particular, everyone has well and truly forgotten all the Happy New Year bollocks and have returned to just being their usual horrible selves.

It has been a truly manic week in more ways than one.

The NHS is in the news again. It happens every year about this time. Tales about how the hospitals are not coping and people will have to wait months to be seen. The ambulance service is stretched to breaking point and NHS staff everywhere are overworked and barely coping.

We called an ambulance for a patient today. It was a blue light response and by time I had been to the toilet and back the ambulance was parked outside and the crew were attending to the patient. Not a terribly bad service I feel.

The pressure on the NHS in all departments is huge. The demand has risen, our population has grown massively over the last few years and we all expect a lot more than is sometimes reasonable these days but I am a staunch defender of it and the people who work in it.

I am overly protective of it, to the point where I will argue for days if necessary about the benefits of it.

I have in the past had my disappointments in its services, particularly when my Dad’s cancer was misdiagnosed and the fight we had for treatment when really, it was too late by then. I have also seen this happen since to friends and to patients. It is heartbreaking and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone but even though these horrible things can and do happen, I cannot be ungrateful for our NHS and what it stands for.

I know there are improvements that could be made almost everywhere and that funding and staffing and so many other things are an issue but when it works and we have all hopefully seen it work in some way or another it is amazing.

I really love my job. It is not in the grand scheme of things very glamorous nor is it high-powered, you do not need a degree in anything other than being a generally nice person, although it does help if you have the patience of a saint but otherwise most people could do it. I always thought working in a GP surgery would be a piece of cake. I mean how hard can be to make a few appointments a day? Oh, how wrong can you be?

Child wise, this last few days have been up and down. Tom is still lurching from one detention to another. I have just picked him up from another after school detention for not attending a lunchtime one (he had written the wrong date in his planner) and I am not at all surprised by this. I think I will now only be surprised if we manage a whole week without one.

The school inform me that he will eventually work out how to avoid getting detentions. I just silently laughed.

Elsie is about to decide on her options, we have parents evening Thursday and an options evening next week. I love parents evening, not. It is a free for all. Toms was a chaotic nightmare of not getting to the right teacher in the allocated 5 minute window and when you did it seemed every other parent had arrived with the same 5 minute window. It’s a farce.

Trying to talk to Elsie about options is hard going. She doesn’t really know what she wants to do when she leaves school, which doesn’t help but does know that she wants to take dance. Marvellous. Will you be interested in taking any other subject, like a language or History, maybe? No, just dance then. Oh and Drama, of course, mustn’t forget drama. She will definitely get an A in that.

Today (it is now Tuesday) has been a good day. I met a normal man today for lunch. It went well. I liked him, I think he liked me. Is this a true story?

Yes it actually is.

The last few days in the dating world have been a bit fast and furious. I was talking to D 42, whose profile it has to be said was a bit vague. We exchanged numbers quite quickly and he then proceeded to get on my nerves quite quickly too.

We exchanged numbers on Thursday, I think, I can’t be sure as it’s all a bit of blur now and by Saturday he practically had us down the aisle. He had bombarded me with photos, all very clean but all very much the same. D, in a t-shirt and cap, D, in a jumper and beanie, D, in his cycling gear, D, with kids in a cap and well just D and lots of them. I have more photos of D on my phone than I do of myself.

He was calling me babe and sweetheart and telling me how wonderful I was and how he knew it was fate that had brought us together, that he had a gut feeling we were going to, ‘just gel’.

The final straw was when he asked if I had told my friends about him? We hadn’t even laid eyes on each other at this point and weren’t even scheduled to meet until this coming Friday. What am I supposed to have told them? A date for the wedding? It was becoming quite clear I was not going to make it.

Yesterday I decided I just couldn’t do it.

He had well and truly put me off. I know he was trying to be nice, in a strange kind of over familiar way but I struggle with all that. I am not an overly emotional person and not overly affectionate either. I don’t do babes and darling and oh, you’re so wonderful, it just feels fake to me.

I don’t feel like I have to tell someone I love them and adore them every five minutes for that to be true. If I love you, you will know I love you but I wont be blowing smoke up your arse every five minutes.

I often jokingly use terms of endearment and mostly use them sarcastically. I call one of my buddies babes, it is just a silly thing we do. I don’t generally use them often and certainly not with someone I hardly know and am even less sure I actually like.

So yesterday I told D, nicely, that I had decided to follow-up on a second date with someone and that I felt that it was only fair to let him know. He was in all fairness absolutely fine and I wasn’t sure he would be actually. So kudos to you D, for taking it on the chin.

I don’t have a second date with anyone though, I feel I should just get that in before everyone gets all excited. No such luck. Still very much in first date hell.

At the same time as I started talking to D, I started talking to M, 47 from Kent. I like M from Kent and the reason I like M from Kent is because I know he will be absolutely no good for me.

I think he has a GF but I’m not sure. He has been married and divorced and has a daughter and he is very, very nice looking and funny and quite bloody sexy actually but there is that little bit of me that suspects he is not as single as I would like him to be. We are still talking and he wants to meet Friday. We were supposed to meet today but he cancelled. I have warned him, he gets three strikes and it’s game over.

We have spoken on the phone and I like him but do I trust him? Not entirely, no. Will I meet him? Yes probably, because I’m a bloody fool. Well if he doesn’t cancel again!

Still, with M cancelling today it gave me the chance to meet K, 45 also from Kent.

This all came about very quickly.

We messaged a couple of times last week, nothing major. A few messages back and forth Thursday and Friday, he said he liked the look of me and was I as nice in the flesh? I said only one way to find out, take me on a date? To which he said, ok I will. I left it there.

Yesterday he messaged and asked if I wanted to meet today and seeing as M had just blown me out, I thought why the hell not. He asked if he could phone me first for a chat and this is where it all started going wrong in my head.

He had an accent and not a very nice one. I don’t wish to offend anyone when I say he was Northern and us Southerners, well, we struggle with accents. I wasn’t keen.

I will apologise now to all my repping friends, who are from all over the country and have a variety of weird and wonderful accents and I know to them that I am the one who has an accent. My Scottish pal, Ruth insists on saying, ‘Cor blimey guv’nor’ every time she speaks to me on the phone. This she thinks is hilarious and it is in a funny sort of way because obviously I am quite posh! 😉

I was though struggling a bit with the whole accent thing and rightly or wrongly had assumed a not very pleasant picture of this poor guy in my head but we had now agreed to meet and I didn’t really have time to change my mind, which is just as well as I think I would have done.

It was actually the buddies who insisted on me going and actually frogmarched me out the building at the designated meeting time. I really did not want to go. My head had made up all these things, he wasn’t going to be anything like his picture. He was going to smell?? He was going to have black teeth and a limp?? Where all this was coming from I have no idea?

I was wrong.

Can you believe it? I was wrong. I was very pleasantly surprised, he was nice looking, funny and easy-going. He seemed to have his shit together and although divorced with a young son, all was well with him. We chatted easily and we laughed a lot. I liked him. I won’t say I fancied the pants off him and I wasn’t sure I wanted to kiss him but it is early days. Is it?

Accent? What accent?

Dare I say that I hope to see him again. Oh my God. Did I actually just say that? I actually want to have a second date. #neverthoughtitwouldhappen

Of course you know what will happen now don’t you? I like him, so he is bound to be the one who doesn’t like me.